1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a gateway apparatus used for connecting a mobile terminal such as a portable telephone permitting a Web page and home page which is made public on the Internet to be read and a network system including the gateway apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, mobile terminals such as portable telephones are widely used. Some of the mobile terminals have display sections constructed by small-sized liquid crystal display units and have electronic mail transmission/reception functions or Internet connection functions in addition to portable telephone communication functions.
On the Internet, a lot of Web server apparatuses provide various pages. Most of the pages are created on the assumption that they will be displayed on a display of a personal computer and there are not so many pages which are provided for mobile terminals such as portable telephones. Further, pages other than the pages for the mobile terminals are often formed by use of image data having an extremely large data amount in comparison with text data.
Therefore, the following problems occur when pages other than the pages for the mobile terminals on Internet are read or observed by use of the mobile terminal such as the portable telephone.
(1) Since the mobile terminal has only a small display section, the page created on the assumption that it is displayed on the display section of the personal computer is difficult to be displayed on the display section of the mobile terminal.
(2) Since the memory capacity of a memory provided in the mobile terminal is small, the memory capacity becomes insufficient in some cases if a page created by use of image data having a large data amount is simply received and stored therein.
(3) In the mobile terminal such as the portable telephone, a charging system for making a charge according to a data amount of transmitted/received data is applied in many cases and if a page of a large data amount is received, communication traffic is increased, thereby causing the communication speed to be lowered or the communication cost to be raised. Further, if data of the page which cannot be displayed is fetched into the mobile terminal, the communication cost becomes wasteful for the reasons described in the above items (1), (2).
As described above, this invention has been made to solve the problem that communication traffic is increased and the communication cost becomes often wasteful if a page of a large data amount which is provided on Internet and is difficult to be displayed on the mobile terminal is fetched into the mobile terminal and an object of this invention is to provide a gateway apparatus and network system capable of displaying only displayable information on the mobile terminal and effectively utilizing information on Internet by use of a portable telephone while suppressing an increase in the communication traffic and preventing occurrence of the wasteful communication cost when a page provided on Internet is read by use of the mobile terminal.
Further, another object of this invention is to provide a network system capable of giving the contents of a page which cannot be displayed on the mobile terminal to the user by printing the same by use of an image forming apparatus and providing an image which satisfies the requirement of the user by printing the image of a page obtained at the time of access by use of the mobile terminal or printing the newest contents of a page accessed by the mobile terminal in a case where the contents of the page is printed by use of the image forming apparatus.
A gateway apparatus according to one aspect of this invention having a function of being connected to a mobile terminal and a function of being connected to a network, comprises a modem which makes data communication via the network; an interface which makes data communication with a mobile terminal; and a controller which extracts only data to be transmitted to the mobile terminal from a page which is made public on the network according to a request from the mobile terminal, transmits the extracted data to the mobile terminal and causes the entire page to be stored into a predetermined storage location if an instruction for storage of the entire page is issued from the mobile terminal.
A network system according to another aspect of this invention comprises a first apparatus having a function of being connected to a mobile terminal and a function of being connected to a network; and a second apparatus capable of making data communication with the first apparatus; wherein the first apparatus includes a modem which makes data communication via the network, an interface which makes data communication with a mobile terminal, and a controller which extracts only data to be transmitted to the mobile terminal from a page which is made public on the network according to a request from the mobile terminal, transmits the extracted data to the mobile terminal and transmits data of the entire page and information indicating a predetermined storage location if an instruction for storage of the page is issued from the mobile terminal and the second apparatus includes a memory section which stores data of the entire page transmitted from the first apparatus into the storage location specified by the first apparatus.
A data processing method according to still another aspect of this invention which is used by a gateway apparatus having a modem connected to a network and an interface which makes data communication with a mobile terminal, comprises downloading page data which is made public on the network by use of the modem according to a request from the mobile terminal connected via the interface; extracting only data to be transmitted to the mobile terminal from the page data downloaded in the above step; transmitting the data extracted in the above step to the mobile terminal; and causing data of the entire page to be stored into a predetermined storage location when an instruction for storage of the entire page is issued from the mobile terminal.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by means of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out hereinafter.